Christopher Davis

I had a few ads and blurbs in the local papers about my concert. Here they are! (click to view larger images)

1. Build a House. Build a sweet website, a base of operations. This could be a blogger blog or a self hosted thing or something like weebly.com. Doesn’t matter. Build a place where people can come to get to know you. Build a place where you can share things with the world.
2. Make Friends. Connect with other people on social media or via email. Reach out. Don’t just put yourself on there and expect to be famous. Engage others with similar interests.
3. Invite Your Friends Over. Presumably you’ve filled house with cool shit. That is, you have some great content. You’d like to share it with the world–you want your friends to come over and check it out. So invite them. Send out a link on your various social media. If you think someone would be particularly interested in the content, send them a personal message. Don’t be afraid to invite people over. As long as you have something for them to do when they get to your house it will be okay.
4. Keep Adding Things and keep inviting people over. Create more content and share it.

Internet marketing is simple. Yet most art musicians suck at it. They have a website. And that’s it. There’s nothing really there. One visit is enough, I never need to go back. Nothing changes and no new content is added.

Give the people you’re trying to reach a reason to come to your home, and make it so cool that the next time you invite them over they can’t help but come back. That’s way different from traditional advertising in which the advertiser seeks only to expose their products to the world. It’s the independent musician’s job to engage potential fans in such a way that they continue to visit.

In short:
Dear Art Musician,

Thanks,
-CD

Just finished arranging yet another Satie piece.

Gnossienne No. 3 (PDF)

This one pretty much arranged itself. The piece was in a good key for guitar from the start, I just had to select accompaniment notes. Some difficult/weird passages in this one.

I don’t listen to guitar music. I might listen to guitar music once in a while to hear a piece, but that’s really it.

To be honest, I just don’t get excited by a lot of guitarists. There are a few players I enjoy, but I’d much rather listen to a string quartet or an orchestra.

Just finished arranging another Satie piece last night.

Gnossienne No. 2 (PDF)

This one doesn’t lie quite as well under the fingers as Gnossienne No. 1, but it works. When I arrange these things I want the extreme legato sound that the piano can get by using the pedal or holding down keys longer than the note value. Obviously we can’t hold down a pedal on the guitar, so a reasonable solution is to use campanella fingering. Playing the melody all on the same string just doesn’t get as nice of an effect to my ear.

As before, the phrasing slurs are not mine, they are Satie’s (or his editor’s).

My final project for composition, Four Pieces for Guitar, is available for download.

Check it out!

The real reason I bought Finale 2010 was so I could have the awesome auto-format stuff.

I mean, who wouldn’t want doubled ties to look like that? I always prefer my sharps over top of the previous note.